


Not Nearly Drunk Enough

by semele



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-05 01:31:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/717318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semele/pseuds/semele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whoever planned Alaric's life was drunk.</p><p>(If strong language offends you, you might want to scroll down.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Nearly Drunk Enough

**Author's Note:**

> This is a series of short scenes I started scribbling down for mlekopijca a few months ago, and now I finally whipped them into something resembling shape. I was going to make a coherent story out of this... but then I realized there can't be a coherent story. This is Alaric's life over the summer between s2 and s3, and there were no stories happening then. There was just life, plain and simple; a series of snippets tragic and pathetic in equal measure. And this is what this story is going to be. An open ending story. I'll keep posting new scenes until I run out of them, and the collection will be random.
> 
> Because, let's face it. Whatever happened over that summer was made of random. So, shall we?

Whoever planned Alaric's life was drunk.

Of course he didn't use to think that. Once upon a time (he was seventeen, possibly high on something illegal and his hair made him look like a constipated rodent), he firmly believed in a Grand Plan. Great things were in stock for him. He'd get into some fancy college, write his senior thesis about the use of cannons in the battle of Gettysburg, fall in love, get an awesome job, drink good whiskey every weekend and buy a dog. In more or less that order.

Well, at least the whiskey part worked out quite nicely. Although he might want to reconsider his definition of “weekend”.

At some point between starting his postgrad at Duke and finding the first of many Isobel's vampire books on a pile of newspapers by the toilet seat Alaric Saltzman learned that if you want to be Alaric Saltzman, you need to have a sense of humor. Later it turned out that this was the most important thing he ever learned in life (apart from making crossbows); something that got him through wearing a ridiculous ring to humor his apparently (not so) crazy wife, whittling his first stake, accepting a job at Mystic Falls High and, surprise, surprise, coming back from the dead.

So when Elena, strangely small and fragile in her black dress, asks him to stay with her and Jeremy “for a little while” after Jenna's funeral, Alaric laughs all this way through packing his suitcase. Actually, he's still grinning when Damon, as always appropriately tragic, comes over with a bottle of suspiciously expensive bourbon.

“If you're not dead, does it mean that I get to punch you in the face for locking me in the witch house with Jeremy?” asks Alaric after the first round.

“Get in line,” mutters Damon in response, his throat tight, and Alaric doesn't ask why.

When they get to the Gilbert house, Alaric is drunk enough for the world to be bearable, but sober enough to be appropriately ashamed of his drunken state. He stumbles through the threshold with an overnight bag and out of habit avoids looking Jeremy in the eye.

How did Jenna call it? Ah yes. Role model.

Elena looks like she understands, and Alaric really fucking hopes that she doesn't, but he isn't nearly drunk enough to ask her directly. So he ends up accepting a pile of blankets from her hands and promising himself that in the morning, everything will be different. He'll get up first, pretend he's not hungover, make waffles; in short: be the fucking adult everyone here needs him to be.

When he rolls off the couch at noon, sore and disgusting, Damon is already in the kitchen, making coffee and arguing with Jeremy about pancakes.

Yeah, this is gonna end well.

***

Damon already has a brother, Alaric reminds himself as he reaches for a bottle. Damon has a brother he will never leave, even if he doesn't tell him half of the things he lets slip over drinks. Alaric probably should write this down on a piece of paper and stick it to his wall, right next to “Elena's birthday, Tuesday, buy cake” and “Sober up, you fuckwit.” The note would say: “Damon might be your brother, but you'll never be his brother, you pathetic moron,” all in bright red, how very stylish of him.

“So, how's Jeremy?” asks Damon after he downs the first glass. “Learning the value of honest work?”

“Like hell.”

Before Damon can pour him more bourbon, Alaric pulls out his phone and hits a few buttons, gets them wrong and mutters a few profanities before he gets to calendar. “Buy post-it notes,” he writes under the next day. And then adds: “You fuckwit.”

***

More often than not Elena is the adult in the house.

It's freaky how, now that they live together, Elena reminds Alaric of Isobel. He never really noticed that when Jenna was around and he was so focused on not fucking up (that went well), but now he flashes back to Isobel way more often than he'd like to.

Yeah, that's healthy.

Elena never asks about her birth mother, and Alaric doesn't volunteer, because having grown-up conversations in which he's the grown-up is kinda beyond his capacity right now, especially when he's sober. Besides, he wouldn't even know how to start. “Hey, about that woman who left you when you were a baby, and then spontaneously combusted in front of you. You wanna know how she liked her eggs?” seems a bit extreme, and he can't think of anything better from the top of his head.

So next time Elena hands him a piece of paper with the time of Jeremy's next dentist's appoinment, and Alaric automatically says “Sure, Is, I'll drop him off,” they both pretend it never happened.

***

Alaric files Elena and Damon under “it's complicated.”

It's hard to not hear them bicker in the living room, and somewhere around third insult Jeremy starts rolling his eyes, making sure Alaric sees it and joins his little “I Judge You So Hard” fest. Jeremy often forgets that Damon can hear every word they say, and his lack of filter is so astonishing that Alaric (who _never_ forgets) simply has to match it.

“He's drooling all over her,” announces Jeremy. “Doesn't this qualify for parental intervention or something?”

“So he can drool all over me?” asks Ric (on scale from one to “fuck no”, how much shouldn't he be having this conversation with a sixteen-year-old?).

“Necessary sacrifice. Just not in my kitchen, please. I don't want to hear anything.”

“Oh no. If I'm taking one for the team, you can suck it up and listen.”

Jeremy considers.

“I'm underage,” he tries. “It could scar me for life.”

“Sure,” agrees Alaric. “And when Bonnie comes over, she sleeps in Elena's bedroom.”

“Damon drool is more scarring than naked Bonnie.”

“Point.”


End file.
